via
Monday, July 5, 2010
'Slippers' help chick walk
via
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
Reunion of girl and orang-utan
His first day of play with Emily came in 2008 when her father Barry, a photographer, had an assignment at the institute and took her along.
So when the pair were reunited two years later, there was a whole new world of play to explore.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Struggling with four across and eight down on your crossword?
Feeling refreshed after a full night's rest is also a great aid to "prospective memory" - being able to remember to do something in the future.
Researchers say the findings, published in the journal Psychological Science, help our understanding of the role sleep plays in brain processing as well as memory.
Professor Dr Mark McDaniel, a psychologist at Washington University in St Louis in America, said: "We found that sleep benefits prospective memory by strengthening the weak associations in the brain, and that hasn't been shown before."
The study found that sleep specifically helped us take advantage of what he calls "weak" memory cues, rather than "strong" ones.
read more
The real zoo escapees that mimic the cartoon characters in Madagascar
Alex the Lion is helped over the perimeter wall by his friend Melman the giraffe, while Gloria the hippopotamus smashes her way straight through, followed by Melman and some monkeys.
The scenario might sound fanciful, but real zoo animals appear to be just as determined and resourceful as their cartoon cousins in liberating themselves from captivity.
The methods of escape range from gnawing a hole in their cages, to scaling fences and crossing moats. In other cases, the creatures have simply capitalised on human error and got out through doors in their cages that were left open.
read more
A warm welcome to guardian.co.uk for all former readers of the Times
And a very warm welcome to all our readers from The Times. We're very sorry you awoke to find you could no longer read your newspaper online without a credit card and we feel your pain.
We couldn't get into the Times site either last week when it was supposed to still be free as the registration system had crashed. But we can help you through this trauma. Call it a belief in an open internet or care in the community if you like, but here at the Guardian we can offer everything you ever wanted from the Times – and more – for nothing.
Thanks Guardian /continue reading
We couldn't get into the Times site either last week when it was supposed to still be free as the registration system had crashed. But we can help you through this trauma. Call it a belief in an open internet or care in the community if you like, but here at the Guardian we can offer everything you ever wanted from the Times – and more – for nothing.
Thanks Guardian /continue reading
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Italy bans kissing in cars and building sandcastles
The coastal town of Eraclea, near Venice, prohibits the building of sandcastles on the beaches because they can "obstruct the passage" of people strolling along the strand.
If you are caught having a smoke on the white beaches of Oristano, in Sardinia, you can be hit with a €360 fine.
On the island of Capri, wearing noisy wooden clogs is banned.
In Bergamo, you can be fined €333 for feeding the pigeons, while Venice punishes the same offence with a €500 penalty. The town of Cesena on the Adriatic Coast extends the ban to feeding feral cats.
read more
+%5B1024x768%5D.jpg)
Saucer
An art collector is walking through the city when he notices a mangy cat lapping milk from a saucer in the doorway of a store and he does a double take.
He knows that the saucer is very valuable, so he walks casually into the store and offers to buy the cat for two dollars.
The store owner replies, “I’m sorry, but the cat isn’t for sale.”
The collector says, “Please, I need a hungry cat around the house to catch mice. I’ll pay you twenty dollars for that cat.”
And the owner says “Sold”, and hands over the cat.
The collector continues, “Hey, for the twenty bucks I wonder if you could throw in that old saucer. The cat’s used to it and it’ll save me from having to get a dish.”
And the owner says, “Sorry buddy, but that’s my lucky saucer. So far this week I’ve sold sixty-eight cats.”
He knows that the saucer is very valuable, so he walks casually into the store and offers to buy the cat for two dollars.
The store owner replies, “I’m sorry, but the cat isn’t for sale.”
The collector says, “Please, I need a hungry cat around the house to catch mice. I’ll pay you twenty dollars for that cat.”
And the owner says “Sold”, and hands over the cat.
The collector continues, “Hey, for the twenty bucks I wonder if you could throw in that old saucer. The cat’s used to it and it’ll save me from having to get a dish.”
And the owner says, “Sorry buddy, but that’s my lucky saucer. So far this week I’ve sold sixty-eight cats.”
Friday, July 2, 2010
The Chameleons of Madagascar
Begin Slide Show
Birds as you've never seen them before
Gallery: Top shots from the bird catwalk
Ancient monster whale more fearsome than Moby Dick
The bones, dated to 12 to 13 million years ago, were spotted by Klaas Post of the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in Peru's Ica desert. In homage to Herman Melville's Moby Dick, the beast has been named Leviathan melvillei.
The skull is a huge 3 metres long, says team member Olivier Lambert at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. The team estimates the whale would have been between 13 and 18 metres long, like a modern sperm whale.
What really surprised the researchers was the size of the whale's teeth. "Some of the biggest ones are 36 centimetres long and 12 centimetres wide, and are probably the biggest predatory teeth ever discovered," Lambert says.
read more
Zoo plans to bring rare animals back from the dead
Take frozen cells from a dead animal, reprogram them to become sperm and eggs, then use these to bring endangered species back from the brink.
That's the aim of a collaboration between the San Diego zoo and The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. At the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in San Francisco last week, Inbar Friedrich Ben-Nun and Jeanne Loring of Scripps described how they have created induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from the frozen skin cells of a deceased male drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus), an endangered monkey found in Nigeria, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
The team's long-term goal is to coax iPS cells into becoming sperm and eggs. They will be making iPS cells from tissue held by San Diego zoo's Frozen Zoo project - which has samples from some 8400 individuals representing more than 800 species. The sperm and eggs could be used in IVF treatments to add genetic diversity to captive breeding programmes. "You could actually breed from animals that are dead," says Loring.
To create the iPS cells, the team used viruses engineered to carry four human genes that can reprogram adult cells into an embryonic stem cell state. However, the trick failed to work with cells from the northern white rhinoceros. Loring says it may be necessary to use rhino versions of the genes.
Another problem is that the reprogramming genes can make the iPS cells cancerous, though other researchers have developed techniques to make iPS cells without leaving copies of the genes behind.
by Peter Aldhous
via New Scientist
That's the aim of a collaboration between the San Diego zoo and The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. At the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in San Francisco last week, Inbar Friedrich Ben-Nun and Jeanne Loring of Scripps described how they have created induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from the frozen skin cells of a deceased male drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus), an endangered monkey found in Nigeria, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
The team's long-term goal is to coax iPS cells into becoming sperm and eggs. They will be making iPS cells from tissue held by San Diego zoo's Frozen Zoo project - which has samples from some 8400 individuals representing more than 800 species. The sperm and eggs could be used in IVF treatments to add genetic diversity to captive breeding programmes. "You could actually breed from animals that are dead," says Loring.
To create the iPS cells, the team used viruses engineered to carry four human genes that can reprogram adult cells into an embryonic stem cell state. However, the trick failed to work with cells from the northern white rhinoceros. Loring says it may be necessary to use rhino versions of the genes.
Another problem is that the reprogramming genes can make the iPS cells cancerous, though other researchers have developed techniques to make iPS cells without leaving copies of the genes behind.
by Peter Aldhous
via New Scientist
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Guilty of discarding some of his best work: Bob Dylan
In Dylan’s case, the periods when the songs flowed free and easy (notably 1961-67 and 1974-83) produced far more songs than his record label could comfortably accommodate on their annual album release. But he has also been guilty of discarding some of his best work because he felt it “wasn’t recorded right” (his own description of the immaculate Blind Willie McTell).
These songs have not been completely lost to posterity because they still exist in manuscripts, studio logs, out-takes, rehearsal track listings, session musicians’ memories or, in some cases, because they have been performed in concert.
Here, then, is just a sampling of some of the songs that got lost in the shuffle, plucked from some 610 song histories in my recently completed two-volume study of Dylan’s remarkable output.
Russian spy joke
Here’s something great. Russian spy ring here in New York City. They were busted in New York City. Once again, they were spotted by an alert T-shirt vendor.
The Russian spies tried to blend in. They were acting like Americans. As a matter of fact, for two weeks, they were pretending they loved soccer.
via
The Russian spies tried to blend in. They were acting like Americans. As a matter of fact, for two weeks, they were pretending they loved soccer.
via
Aw, sweetie, you got a splinter.
'We share so much with these animals and I don't think we give them the credit for how much like us they are.' photographer Evan Hambrick
read more
Man vs. Horse
read more
Meet the busker who plays in a BIN while his dog stands watch
read more
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)